Did anyone scan it? QR codes and the journeys we invent
QR codes get added because there is space in the corner, not because anyone needs them. A measurable route is not the same as the route people actually take, and nobody comes back afterwards to ask how many scans there were.
My team get asked to put QR codes on all manner of things. Posters, flyers, exhibition stands, screens, graphics, presentation slides. They appear in far more places than they should.
There is usually a bit of pushback, because quite often the thing someone wants the QR code added to is something people are likely to be looking at on their phone in the first place. Which presents a fairly obvious problem. It is incredibly hard to scan a QR code when the QR code is on the device you would normally use to scan it.
That doesn’t always stop it appearing. The conversation tends to go something like this. “Can we add a QR code?” “Most people will be looking at this on their phone.” “Can we add one anyway?” And, quite often, one appears.
What struck me recently is that, off the top of my head, I can’t remember anybody ever coming back afterwards and asking how many times it was scanned. Not whether the artwork looked good. Not whether the campaign went out. Not whether the QR code worked. How many people actually used it.
I started thinking about this after reading Andrew Tindall’s piece in The Drum, headlined “If you’re still putting QR codes in your ads, sorry, you’re a moron”. He was talking mainly about television, where the numbers make his case for him. Connected TV scan rates have fallen to around 0.004%, which is a statistical way of saying nobody is getting off the sofa to scan anything. His argument is rather stronger than mine. But it got me thinking about all the other places we put them, and about how odd our relationship with QR codes has become.
Because I use them all the time. I spend a large chunk of my life ferrying children between various sporting activities, and QR codes are genuinely useful there. At an athletics meet, scan this for the results. At a football tournament, scan this for the fixtures. At a cross-country race, scan this for the start times. Perfect. I am standing there, I need a specific piece of information, and the code gets me to it immediately. The QR code is solving a problem I already have.
That feels very different from sticking one in the corner of an advert and hoping someone suddenly feels compelled to point their phone at it.
You’ve probably seen the sort of thing. Big image, short headline, logo, QR code. SCAN TO FIND OUT MORE.
It looks like a journey. See advert, become interested, take phone out, open camera, scan code, visit website, read page, do whatever it is we wanted you to do. Very neat.
People are rarely that neat. They might see the advert and search for the organisation later. They might remember the name, take a photo, tell someone else about it, or see the same organisation another three or four times before doing anything at all. Or they might ignore it completely. Most of that is invisible to us, which is the same problem as building for the visitors who’ll never visit.
The QR code is appealing because it gives us a visible route between the advert and the website. It makes something physical feel digital. It also makes it feel measurable. We can create a special link, add tracking, put the little square on the artwork, and now we have a funnel. Except a measurable route is not necessarily the route people take.
That’s the bit I find most interesting. The QR code itself isn’t really the issue. The issue is the assumption sitting behind it. We’ve decided how somebody is going to behave, drawn a neat little journey for them, and then designed around that journey.
This happens all of the time in marketing. We add buttons because we want people to click. We build landing pages because we want people to arrive there. We map funnels because we want people to move neatly from one stage to another. And we add QR codes because we want somebody to scan them. It is the same habit that means we can tell you what an enquiry cost to generate but not what it cost to answer. We count the thing that was easy to count.
Sometimes they will. Sometimes it makes complete sense. But there is a fairly simple test. Does this make something easier for the person looking at it? If scanning a code gets me the race results, the football fixtures, the menu, the timetable or the information I need right now, it is doing a job. If we’re adding one because there is an empty bit of space in the bottom-right corner of a poster, we should think again.
And if we do add one, somebody should probably ask the obvious question afterwards.
Did anyone scan it?